I'm not sure what forum this belongs on, so I'll try here as my current emotional state is centering around frustration.
I'm new here, and I'm struggling with the large decision about whether to reinstate my engagement to my (ex?)fiance. We're both struggling with the decision, together. Brief background: we've been together 3 years. He's been diagnosed ADD for 6 months. He sees a therapist who doesn't specialize in ADD, but he likes her quite a bit and she's smart and quick on the uptake and willing to read and learn to try to help him. He has a prescription for Adderall, but doesn't like how he feels on it and takes it only when approaching a conversation-intensive task.
Our relationship has so many positives that at times I feel guilty and petty and as if I have unrealistic expectations for wanting more. I've read extensively here in the past few days and I see so many of my struggles recounted in others' posts, I don't know whether to be really relieved or really scared. He's my closest friend and as a friend he's just amazing. I really love him, his good heart and his kooky ideas and his sponteneity and genuine warmth, but as a romantic partner, someone I am supposed to be able to depend on and lean on when times are hard? I just don't think he's capable of that. And it kills me, because I don't know if I'm capable of being with someone who can't pull their share of the load.
I know from reading here that I don't have to list some of the basics, his inability to finish a task or show up when he's supposed to or to decide which is more important: putting his clothes in the dryer, finding his ipod, or picking up his girlfriend in time for an appointment. He eats us out of house and home. His finances are a mess. He is often clueless as to how we've arrived in an argument or a hurtful situation, when to me it's transparently clear how we've gotten there. He's left me stranded --- yeesh, I can't count how many times. He tries to grab the check at a restaurant when I know and he knows he's overdrawn. He doesn't own a car and doesn't seem to respect all of the money and time and paperwork others have to do to maintain the one he's asking to borrow. When we first started dating he left his pets at my house "for a week" that turned into 11 months.
But beyond that general stuff, which I really think I could learn to live with, there are things that are incredibly important to me in a relationship that I'm struggling so much with. Namely, and this is hard to admit - I have a hard time respecting him sometimes. I come from a family of hard workers. Men and women alike are self-disciplined and they show love for their families by working hard for them and fixing things, driving people to and from airports, shoveling snow and working and raising children and doing charity work. They are dependable. Whereas my fiance... he's good hearted, he tries, but he is the opposite of self-disciplined and sometimes it's hard for me to find respect for him when I value that trait so much. He says he's an ideas person - and he is, he has terrific ideas and he could talk a dog off a steak. But I have to constantly remind him that words are not actions. Saying something isn't enough! Actually DOING it is what makes something real. As a romantic partner, sometimes I feel like I get fed plate after plate of imaginary food and he's bewildered as to why I'm not getting full... metaphorically speaking.
So the respect thing is huge. And so is the resentment. He resents that I am not as laid-back as he is. I try to tell him - before he came into my life, I was way more laid back! But in the last 3 years, it's like he uses all the laid-back-ness we have available to us as a couple. One of us has to be the grown up for our lives to work, and he's never willing for that to be him. He's not capable of filling that role. So it falls to me more than ever when I'm with him. And he resents that I'm not "fun" more often, and that I "work too hard". And I resent that he doesn't see the sheer volume of work it takes to keep two adult's lives going. Of course it's hard work! I have two times the amount of responsibility I used to have. These are major issues for us.
Another of his big issues with me - he says my anger and hurt "come out of the blue" and that they are so unpredictable, it scares him. Before his ADD diagnosis, I couldn't believe he could say that and it always confused me. I've never been told that by another partner, ever. I am not an angry person. I'm pretty quiet and even-tempered. The times I get angry and hurt are in my opinion not only justified, but pretty well provoked. After his diagnosis his therapist said that perhaps the reason he can't predict my anger or hurt is because he doesn't think through the logical consequences of some of the things he says. And what looks like a clear-cut case of being incredibly hurtful, to me, is just an interesting new conversational topic to him. So my anger is bewildering and "out of the blue" to him. From my perspective I give many, many verbal and nonverbal signals to tell him his words are becoming hurtful. He just can't sense them.
So we've taken a relationship break to think about our feelings and what we think we can handle as a couple. We have so much love between us. Emotionally I've never felt so cherished, and not in the hyperfocused way I've read about, but in a gentle and warm love. But the mechanics of the relationship... I don't know that I can carry the load for us both without too much resentment, or that it would be fulfilling for me. I should add that I have a child, too, so feeling like my partner is yet another responsibility makes him seem "childlike" and like less of a romantic equal. There are other things, but I think that's all I can write about at this point. Thanks for reading....
That was us
Submitted by BreadBaker on
You should know that you just described the courtship between me and my husband.
It's interesting to hear you mention that he thinks you have anger issues. My husband described me in the same way, and I've, also, never heard this from anyone else. I can put up with an awful lot until I lose it, and there are many, many signs and signals beforehand that I'm hurt, upset, sad, etc. After a while, and because he was so insistent, I assumed that I really *did* have problems in this area and I beat myself up over it. But my friends and therapist kept telling me "no, you're not like that at all." Yours in the first explanation I've heard that makes sense to me. He really didn't pick up on any signs or feedback from me that I was hurt, etc., and he would just keep doing things that caused me pain and escalate the situation until I hit a wall.
I'm afraid that we, too, had a parent-child relationship. I don't think that ever really goes away in most cases. I also think that--again, not necessarily in all, but in most cases--you're just not going to have a truly adult partner. You have to decide for yourself what you want and what you're willing to let go in order to be with this man. You *may* be one of the lucky couples who can make it work--or you may not. We weren't--my husband won't acknowledge to what a great extent our marital problems were caused by the ADD, and he abandoned the marriage, believing that I was the cause of our misery and problems. Between having my life almost utterly destroyed by this disorder, having the marriage torn apart by his abandoning it, and then being blamed for things that he largely did to me, it was like being run over by a car, and then having the car back up and run over me again--and again, and again.
It may work out for you. It may not. You take that chance with marriage no matter who you marry. You need to sit down and think if this is someone you want to entrust your life and happiness to.
There's a lot that's familiar
Submitted by Sparkle on
There's a lot that's familiar to me in your response, unfortunately... especially the part where your husband blamed you for the problems that you could trace back to his ADD. We have the same dynamic right now. The stress of keeping both our lives afloat is huge, and my fiance will tell me that the single biggest problem he has with me is that I'm always working so hard and feeling stressed. I try to explain that if he was able to take part in some of the running of our lives together, I'd be less stressed and work less hard. If those are indeed his "biggest problems" then this would be the obvious fix. But the truth is he knows he can't participate for very long in the details. He will try, he really will - it just won't last very long and there's often a trade-off of consequences from him trying to handle the details. So if I'm willing to accept that MY consequence of this is that details will fall to me, why isn't he willing to accept HIS consequence is that he will live with a person who works hard and is sometimes stressed because of it? He can't see that, though. He just sees that "something is amiss" in his life - and even if he has precipitated that problem, he still wants it to go away without his active participation.
Sometimes I look at other couples and I see them acting as a functional team - dividing the work up, both adults, both contributing - and my heart hurts. I want that. Maybe that's a babyish thing to say. We all have our problems, I know this. Sometimes seeing "equality" in a relationship just makes me long for it so much.
That's not babyish
Submitted by Sueann on
Banish that word from your vocabulary, unless you are talking about an actual baby.
All adults in the 21st century are raised to expect a partnership. Women don't expect to be housewives any more-making his lunch and ironing his shirt while he goes out to slay the corporate dragon. But that still means someone has to iron the shirts and pack the lunches for two people and the ADDer never expects it to be him.
I hear you on respecting hard work. My father took of maybe one sick day a year, and that was if he was really sick. Staying home because of a cold or whatever was "giving in to yourself" and not permitted. So being married to a person who wouldn't go to work at all was terrifying to me. I did lose respect for him, and even though he's working now, I never really got it back.
Think carefully...
Submitted by jules on
Sparkle, your story sounds so familiar. I too have a husband who is spontaneous, warm and caring, who loves me beyond anything, and who is (was?) my best friend. However, I am also familiar with losing respect because he doesn't work as hard as I do (I am the bread winner, and I have let him have it comfortable for too long), and building resentment because of that. Increasingly, I have become the adult while he is the child in the relationship. That is so difficult to deal with - having to shoulder more and more responsibility.
Where you have an advantage is that you are aware of the ADD early on in your relationship. We were married for seven years before it was diagnosed (diagnosis was a couple of months back, and we are trying to come to terms with it). In those seven years, the anger, resentment and loss of respect simmered below the surface, and I spent most of the time thinking that the problems we experienced was because I was having problems relating to our relationship. You need to decided now whether, with the knowledge you have now of ADD, you can both work at this together. He needs to be able to convince you of his commitment to making positive changes. If you are uncertain of his commitment, I would be very hesitant to continue. Marriage is hard work (even for non-ADDers) - you don't need the added burden of someone who isn't prepared to work on his issues.
I don't want to sound all doom and gloom here. Just be aware of what you are taking on. Use your knowledge of the condition to inform you. The hardships are not going to disappear without a lot of work - you need to be sure that he is up to that.
Good luck.
My story is very similar as
Submitted by newfdogswife on
My story is very similar as well. I agree with everyone here, please take your time and think through all situations you know you will encounter very carefully. Luckily, like everyone has said, at least you know up front what you are possibly up against. This will help you in tackling many problems head on. I believe one of the keys to success in a relationship like this is to be brutally honest with each other about every aspect of your lives and then communication between the two of you about it.
Only you can decide
Submitted by ZeroEight on
what you are willing to live with. You sound an awful lot like me - raised to value hard work and unable to respect your fiance because he doesn't feel the same. I found out about my husband's ADD less than a year after we were married. Around the same time, he was fired (again) and his mother was diagnosed with leukemia. In the meantime, I was growing a business and wondering why maintaining the house, planning social activities, managing the finances and pretty much keeping life happening was mainly up to me. My husband became so consumed with his mother's illness he further abandoned me and our marriage. He would become so stressed out that he'd get sick himself, and then expect me to take care of him on to of everything else I was doing to keep things afloat. As of today, about 10 months later, he is living with his parents and "taking care of" his mom and I am in our condo alone. He is threatening divorce constantly, tells me I am uncaring and believes that I am the reason for our problems. I cannot win in this situation because if I expect anything of him while his mom is ill I am perceived as a selfish person.
If I had known that I was going to be getting a child instead of a true partner, I would not have chosen this path.
Right now, I am so torn between wanting to end the marriage and wanting to try to make things work, because I love him and he was my best friend. I do not think he is a bad person, but he does not yet seem to want to take responsibility for how his ADD has contributed to the current state of our marriage. His family has enabled him his entire life and they continue to do so. They buy him beer and food and give him cash because he's spending so much time helping his sick mother. They do not seem to realize that these actions are causing further damage to our relationship.
If you think that it is difficult now, you need to be prepared for what might happen if there was a crisis in your marriage. The man I believed would be my partner in life cannot cope with his mother's illness to the point of not functioning. I can only imagine what will happen if/when she dies, and more terrifyingly, what would happen if *I* were to get sick. I am only thankful we do not have children. He wants several, I know better than to bring children into this dysfunctional situation.
My husband is also full of wonderful ideas and no follow through. He wanted to be a partner in my business but I cannot even count on him to pay our bills on time. He tried to work for me for a while and it was a disaster. He is a very intelligent guy, holds a masters in accounting, but his resume is so spotty I fear it will be a long time before he can find another job. The burden on me to earn enough to carry us both (including his $50,000 in student loans) means that I spend a lot of time working. And then he tells me I'm too stressed, or he laments his bad day dealing with his mother's illness and wants me to coddle him. I simply don't have the energy to do it all.
We have been going to counseling and I've committed to learning as much as possible about how I can change my own behavior to help make it work. I just feel that he is so needy and dependent, and I'm afraid that I will put forth all of this effort with little return from him, or will ultimately decide that I should have ended it before wasting years of my life trying to mend it.
I recommend that you fully explore how his behavior will impact you before you commit to marriage. You may find that his love changes after you are married and he will put even less effort in. My husband believes that marriage is unconditional love (the mother kind), that I should trust him implicitly though he's disappointed me so many times, and that I should support him indefinitely while he indulges his latest passions. Yet the river of devotion flows only in one direction - towards him.
I miss the man I married and was so excited to share my life with. I don't know if I'm now discovering the real him or if he's just lost himself in the midst of the overwhelming emotion he's currently experiencing with all that we've gone though in the last three years of our relationship. We have been married just over a year and a half. This is not what I wanted for myself and I am broken hearted for us both.
I am hoping to be able to post more positively in the future. I just don't know right now if we are headed toward healing or divorce. It will be up to him to make that decision.
You need to find out before you get in too deep if your ex-fiance is willing to put in the effort to make your marriage successful in light of his ADD. I understand your love for him. But it is a very bitter pill to swallow.
I wish I had that all figured out
Submitted by Clarity on
before I made the commitment, had children, bought a home... If I would of had your ability to summarize my relationship with my ADD husband I would like to think I would of put a lot more distance and time between us to figure out it would eventually be too much for me. Especially now that I'm older the stress has always caused physical symptoms such as high blood pressure, heart palpitations and plenty of angry moments. I'm exhausted. Now that he has been diagnosed and medicated it helps to take the edge off but without good counsel or some powerful divine intervention I will never be able to let my guard down. He's still as fun loving and spontaneous as ever and I'm still the one with the strong work ethic. His financial irresponsibility is a big red flag. I wish I would of seen it that way instead of being confident that we would learn and grown together. There's been none of that here. As painful and heart breaking it could be to walk away even now I can only dream of it... sigh...
Learning About ADD
Submitted by Elisabeth on
I guess my reaction to reading your post was "How much does she understand about ADD?" I understand what you are saying and where your confusion and stress is coming from but I also sense that perhaps you don't know the ins and outs of ADD and how it affects your boyfriend. It affects all sufferers differently and I think you always need to remind yourself that it is indeed a brain disorder. I know I always have to remind myself about that with my husband. He has ADD and I don't. I guess if he was in a wheelchair it would be obvious all the time what, when and how he needs my help. As ADD is not a physically obvious disability, those of us who do not have it probably will never fully appreciate just how much it influences every day life. In other words, is easy to forget it is there.
I think a good thing to do would be to google ADD. Wikipedia has a great info page on it including a list of symptoms etc and work out which symptoms fit your fiance and also what his trigger points are. In times of stress and fatigue it is most likely his ADD will be worse. Also a bad diet can contribute to ADD symptoms being a bit stronger too. Exercise helps too. The reason why I say this is because of what you have written in your 3rd and 4th paragraphs. You may find it hard to respect your fiance at times because of what is perceived to be laziness/not trying hard enough. Again I use the wheelchair analogy. If he was in a wheelchair, not walking, would you call him lazy? It can be so difficult for those of us who do not have it to remember that behaviour like this occurs as a result of the ADD.
Another thing that may help you is also knowing the physiology of the brain and how ADD then changes it. ADD affects the frontal cortex of the brain which is where our logic/common sense is processed. In very basic terms, ADD wreaks havoc on the neurons and messages firing. Sometimes they fire and connect with the wrong parts, sometimes they don't fire at all. Meds like Dexamphetamine (which is what my husband takes) or Adderall help these neurons fire and make the right connections. When you realise this –– that is really does affect the logic/common sense of the brain –– then some of the ADD behaviour that makes no sense to those of us who do not have it suddenly becomes a little bit clearer. It doesn't mean it necessarily makes sense to us, but at least we know where it has come from and why.
I know what I have said is not the answer but I hope it helps you to think about why/how is he behaving like he is. I am not saying it is easy then on. He still needs to address his ADD head on, take his meds, understand his symptoms, his triggers, how his behaviours affect you and your every day lives together –– in other words he needs to understand how he and his ADD interact with life.
Living with ADD is not easy but I am also so lucky that my husband tackles it head on with meds, diet, exercise and a strong will to better himself for not just his life but for mine too. He is the most loving, fun, kind natured, big hearted person I have ever met. Sometimes it gets a little crazy but we are very good at knowing when to reign it in. It takes practice and it is never perfect but neither of us would trade his ADD for the world. Good luck, I wish you all the best.
Thank you all so much for
Submitted by Sparkle on
Thank you all so much for your stories. I have so much to think about. Our update is that we've been in this limbo-land of "taking a break" while still maintaining something close to our regular friendship, relationship and life. Which works just fine for him, but not so much for me.
I've read quite a few books, blogs and websites and we have now visited a couples counselor three times. I feel like I'm getting to know the ADD parts of his personality very well, able to predict them and understand them. But all the understanding I can do doesn't make me want a whole partner any less. And I'm not sure he can be that whole partner consistently.
Your stories of marriage really make me stop and think. I AM at that early stage some of you are looking back on, and I still have the freedom of choice to walk away. That comforts me and also makes me very scared. I don't want to lose him. But when I see what I consider more "normal" couples I really think hard about what a relationship means to me and how it fits into my life. What I want for myself. What I can handle.
I don't have the answers.